ACA and Dissappointing numbers (Page 3)

Here is a reset following year one of the Affordable Care Act.  From now on, I will be referring to it as the Diminishing Paycheck Act, as my premiums are going up 32% starting January 1, 2015.  

You obviously read it wrong.
"We’re going to work with your employer to lower the cost of your premiums by up to $2,500 a year" - Obama

In all seriousness though, here's a quote from the obamacarefacts.com website: (privately ran info website)

While the average premium continues to rise faster than inflation and has since 1999, the amount of the premium many Americans will pay will go down significantly starting in 2014. Those making under 400% of the federal poverty level are eligible for premium tax credits which reduce monthly premium rates. Small employers can also get tax breaks of up to 50% off their cost of their employee’s premium.

Those who receive tax credits and tax breaks can expect to pay much lower premium costs (although the rest of the cost is made up through subsidies). Some Americans will even get assistance on out-of-pocket costs like copays, coinsurance, out-of-pocket maximums and deductibles and over 15 million will get free insurance through Medicaid.

On the other side of the coin, higher earners may see their rates go up due to the inherent “cost sharing” associated with ObamaCare being a tax. Those who make more pay more, those who make less, pay less. Also note, high-end insurance plans are subject to a 40% excise tax starting in 2018. The excise tax will greatly increase the cost of high-end insurance plans.

I can simplify it.  If you aren't poor, your rates are going up to pay for the poor.

"THE SKY IS FALLING, THE SKY IS FALLING...."  says Chicken Little (any resemblence to BT members living or dead is a pure coincidence).

Obama did not create Ebola, he's not coming for your guns, he didn't kill Kennedy (however he was spotted on the grassy knoll), and he didn't raise your insurance rates.  Blame THAT on your Insurer.  You seriously believe your rates weren't going up REGARDLESS of the ACA. I think it's called Capitalism. 

One slight correction, it's called economics and has nothing to do with the insurance companies.  I did the math last year, but if insurance companies paid no employee payroll, and cut out all profit, it would equate to a something like 30 cents per month per policy holder (can't remember the exact number, but it was ridiculously low).  They make big money as a business, but it's such a microscopic percentage of the rates, that insurance companies are not the problem.  They're just a symptom.  The problem is healthcare costs keep going through the roof because the demand for healthcare has been skyrocketing for decades, and the only way for hospitals to try and control it is by raising their prices to decrease the demand.

The government solution was to only address the symptom and ignore the problem by giving even more people insurance, so now the demand is spiking higher yet, so the healthcare costs will continue to rise at an accelerated rate.  Insurance companies are just a pass-through of the healthcare costs which are being driven up by Obamacare.

The net effect, as us opponents of the ACA have always said is this:All people who have existing coverage will see their rates rise at a faster rate than they would have without the ACA due to subsidizing more poor people and folks with pre-existing conditions.
The Demand for healthcare will increase due to all the new covered people, which will make it more expensive.
Insurance rates will go up even more to offset the higher costs of care.

No, the sky is not falling because there are good things that come out of the ACA, but unfortunately they come at a price.  Based on the election results where 100% of the R's ran on "repeal-Obamacare" platforms, I'd say the public is less and less fond of the ACA overall.

I would like to see a more sensible solution put in place with input from both parties, but the Healthcare industry is going to do everything they can to keep the ACA because it's government mandated demand.   I'd love it if the fed's passed a law that said everyone gets free phone systems from my company (compliments of the taxpayer).  woohoo.  We'd be busy as crap and our prices would go up, but daaaang I'd make a lot of money.  lol

No one said the sky is falling, but the ACA will crumble under it's own design.  Fortunately, I've got time to wait.

My insurance premiums has risen steadily in the 5-8% per year range for the past decade.  The provision of healthcare under the traditional insurance model has been unworkable for years.  Unfortunately, when the Democrats decided to ram through the ACA they opted to double-down on the traditional insurance model and big insurance.  I think it's called Crony Capitalism.   

While I don't believe the ACA will last for even 3 or 4 years as it's currently structured, the SCOTUS ruling on King v. Burwell will hasten it's demise.

Agree about the SCOTUS, It seems like a weird little oversite (which it obviously was), but I guess that's what happens when you ram through a hyper partisan one sided bill.  Oops

Don't believe the hype ~ the express language granting tax credits only Exchanges "established by the State" was added in multiple places at multiple times during the drafting process.  What the House Democrats knew or didn't know is of no consequence - they played no role in the drafting.  The ACA was drafted in the Senate under the supervision of the White House.

It could have been simple arrogance too.  I can certainly see the "we know whats good for you" types in Washington just assuming all the states would sign up for the ACA.  Either way, I think it's a pretty fatal blow to the ACA as a whole because it's crystal clear in the law.  If you are in a state that doesn't have a state exchange, then you don't get any subsidies.  The 10 people who signed up nationwide will be very upset.  hehe

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!  

There is NO, I repeat NO, place for ACA success stories here.  lol   (Congrats to you and I, for one, am not at all surprised to find it's working for people)

There was some Blue Cross story in the news a year or so ago and I ran through their financials to come up with the numbers.  I just did a quick check of the Blue Cross of Nebraska financials to see what the numbers looked like here in my state.  I'd say in general the larger the state, the more "efficient" the administrative costs would be due to higher population.  So, Nebraska would probably be an example of the insurance company requiring more cost per policy holder than larger states.

State Financial Examination report for BCBS of Nebraska

Total Policy Holders: 700k
Total Revenue:  $1.58B
Net Income: $24.5M
Admin Expenses (payroll, etc): $143.3M

So, if you were to remove 100% of the profit from the insurance company in this case and credit it to the policy holders it would be a net effect of reducing the premium by $35/year or $2.92/month.  The other argument is that insurance executives make fat profits and it doesn't hit the bottom line, so I then take out all admin expenses which removes salary/benefits/etc. and that works out to a total of $240 per year or $19.98/mo. if you combine all admin expenses and profits from BCBS of Nebraska.
Purely based on the numbers, I feel it is very difficult for anyone to say that it's the "insurance companies" that are driving costs up.  They're just a pass through entity that takes their small percentage of the pie.  Yes, they contribute, but it's a very small amount.

One thing that's interesting in the report I linked above:
Net Premium Income:
2010: $1.37B
2011: $1.43B
2012: $1.52B
2013: $1.59B

Hospital and medical benefits paid out:
2010: $927M
2011: $1.06B
2012: $1.1B
2013: $1.14B

Prescription benefits paid out:
2010: $183.8M
2011: $186.96M
2012: $194.2M
2013: $207.6M

I don't think there's anyone here who feels that there aren't people benefiting from the ACA.  However, that in no way justifies it's existence.  I can create a tax on the poor that gives me a $1000 credit on December 15th to help with Christmas presents.  It will benefit me, so therefore it's a good thing right?

There are most definitely people who will and are benefiting from the ACA, but there are also a lot of people who are not.  The money has to come from somewhere.

Here's an article by the Washington times from a few weeks back discussing all of the premium increases:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/28/obamacare-sends-health-premiums-skyrocketing-by-as/?

Sure, the Federal Government is subsidizing a lot of these increases for poor people.  However, just because the individual doesn't have to pay more out of pocket doesn't mean it's not going up.  This is the big flaw with the ACA, because it is driving the demand for healthcare tremendously, which is creating higher and higher premiums.  The poor are insulated, but the rest of us are not.  The other irony, to me anyways, is that outside of putting more people on medicaid there are pretty much just as many people (or more) who are uninsured today as there were prior to the ACA.  /facepalm

I agree that it's really hard to find constructive numbers because both sides are pushing their agenda's and use the numbers that look the best for them.

Most of my opposition is based on my personal experience as a business owner and my knowledge of economic theory.  The ACA is an attempt to fix the fact that insurance was becoming more and more expensive.  This is absolutely an issue that's effecting millions of people, but the reason insurance is so expensive is because healthcare services are becoming more and more expensive due to excessive demand (and many other reasons).  The goal of the ACA is to give more people insurance so they have more access to healthcare services, but unfortunately by it's very definition having more people use healthcare will do nothing more than drive healthcare costs up even further.  The government can certainly subsidize the insurance premiums, which they are doing, but that's yet another band-aid to a symptom while ignoring the problem.

This survey from Gallup did have some empirical data about the trend of people putting off health care services.  It's probably a little soon to say the ACA has helped or hurt, but the data doesn't look promising.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/179774/cost-barrier-americans-medical-care.aspx

I honestly don't have a huge problem with the government coming up with a system to help people have access to healthcare.  I just wish they would do it in a more practical way.  The ACA basically subsidizes millions of people to buy regular insurance and the fact that insurance companies and healthcare providers loves it, should tell us all something.  

I felt we should have taken a hybrid approach where we create government own/run clinics to provide universal healthcare to anyone who needs it.
Continue to have private insurance for those that can afford it.
Completely remove healthcare insurance from employers to allow individuals to feel the true costs of insurance.  Similar to auto insurance.
Allow insurance companies to practice nationwide.  Having state wide insurance companies is stupid, inefficient, and expensive.

I'll make it really simple.  Insurance companies ROI outperform the stock market average by 5-8% every year.  Without fail.  Only defense contracting and energy (oil) outperform them.  And we are aware the connection between these industries and the government, right?

There's no question insurance companies are making money and that they're making more money because their revenues are increasing due to the ACA.  However, I always try to help people put it in context because everyone likes to blame the "insurance companies" for making everything more expensive.  They're simply the middle man that makes money from the cash flowing from us to the medical industry.  When the medical industry costs more and more people are forced (by law) to get insurance, then insurance companies make more.  As I've said before, you can wipe all profit from your insurance company and your premium would barely change.
The insurance companies were absolutely on board with the ACA because it increased their top line revenue, as were most other healthcare related industries.

current numbers:

(graph150107a.jpg)

(graph_med150105.jpg)

Those are some fancy graphs, but I'm not really sure what they're saying.

It appears that they're saying the enrollments are significantly less than predicted and things need to pick up in order to hit the CBO projections.  Is that your take?

On a side note, my 20 year old son has been getting an interesting perspective on the ACA.  He has a job working for Dell in their callcenter.  However, he's not taking Dell calls, he's taking ACA calls for a large insurance provider in CA.  He sits in a callcenter with several hundred other people and says that on most days he might get one or two calls all day.  This appears to go along with the articles from a year or so back about the government paying callcenter staff based on headcount versus calls taken. /facepalm

Another interesting part is he mentions that it's virtually impossible to get their ACA insurance canceled.  People are many months past due and as long as they pay $10 or some minimal amount they let them stay covered.  He laughs because people still complain about even paying the $10.

I still feel the ACA is a hot mess and most of it's problems are being hidden from the public, but more government debt will happily continue masking it for many years to come.
The whole purpose of the ACA was to fix the uninsured problem and yes it did decline the numbers slightly, but those declines are almost exclusively due to the expansion of medicaid (aka totally free insurance).  The working folks who couldn't afford insurance before still can't afford insurance today.